


The Road Down

by chiiyo86



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Percy, Gen, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 11:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13363890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: Orthax keeps his hooks into Percy. It all goes down as badly as Percy always knew it would.





	The Road Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/gifts).



> I tagged the fic gen because it felt misleading to use a / tag for this, so I hope this is the descent into darkness that you wanted! Thanks to my friend S for the help!

There are probably a thousand other ways this could have turned out. And yet, as events unfold, every step down that dark, unforgiving path, Percy never ceases to be inhabited by a sense of inevitability. There's comfort to be found in realizing that things are indeed as bad as you feared. 

\---

"Your sister left us the day those arrows found my chest. She did not die from those wounds, but to watch you leave me there in the snow. I have a new family. I am a Briarwood, and I have a destiny with the Whispered One."

The green tinge from the glass wall keeping them apart makes Cassandra look sick. Or maybe this is _Percy_ feeling sick, his stomach sinking as if he'd swallowed stones or blocks of ice. He isn't surprised, though; he'd rather hoped that this wouldn't happen, that he'd manage to save at least one member his doomed family, but he can't say that he's shocked by this turn of events. 

Neither is he shocked when Cassandra's name appears on the barrel of the pepperbox. The shadow's rasping voice is hounding him relentlessly, ' _You must kill her. Only then will your revenge be complete. Your sister's dead and this impostor is sullying her memory._ ' That last part is what really sways him, what makes his finger press the trigger. Cassandra said it herself--his sister is dead. This will be one of his siblings that he'll be able to bury himself.

When he points his gun at her, rather than cowering in fear she looks him straight in the eye. She doesn't seem surprised either, nor does she look supplicating or provocative. Her demeanor is calm, accepting, maybe because she shares his feeling that it was preordained that they would come to this. From the moment he left her to bleed in the snow, he'd set them on this path. There is no turning back. 

\---

The others keep sneaking worried glances at him, even after they've fought and defeated the shadow demon. _They_ were surprised and shocked that he killed his sister. He finds it annoying, and even hypocritical on Vax's part, since he'd made no mystery of the fact that he didn't trust Cassandra as soon as they'd come upon her in the castle. 

"It would've been one thing to kill her in the heat of battle, when we were fighting the Briarwoods," Vax explains to him one day. "But gunning her down in cold blood…" Vax shivers and glances toward Vex, his own sister, who is busy doing the group's accounts at a corner of the inn's table. "It was the look on your face, Percy," he finally says. 

Scanlan tries to steal his pepperbox from him, going as far as using a spell for it, but fortunately Percy manages to resist the spell and keep his gun. The mere thought of his most prized possession being destroyed is enough to make Percy sweat. He would have never been able to replicate it! Clearly Scanlan doesn't understand, or doesn't appreciate, how uniquely crafted this gun is. _Philistine_. 

Percy interprets that harrowing near-miss incident as a lesson: no matter how comfortable he has become in Vox Machina's company, he would better not feel too complacent. You only had one shot at family and he'd lost his in a chaos of blood and screams. He shouldn't think of his traveling companions as a replacement for the people he lost, but as a mere commodity. He swears to himself not to be caught off guard again. 

\---

The day the Chroma Conclave rains fire and destruction over the city of Emon is also the day when new names appear on the barrel of Percy's gun. Four more names to add to Anna Ripley's name, which is still unfinished business: _Thordak, the Cinder King; Raishan, the Diseased Deceiver; Umbrasyl, the Hope Devourer; Vorugal, the Frigid Doom._

The rest of the party starts to fret at the magically appearing names. They tell him that there's something wrong with his gun, that he should get rid of it. Percy, on the hand, is submerged by a sentiment of relief. He'd been on edge these past few weeks, nagged by the feeling that there was something he should be doing. He'd thought it could be the guilt of leaving Whitestone in the hands of a hastily-appointed Council, when he should have been, by right and by duty, the one to oversee its reconstruction. But he couldn't make himself stay in Whitestone. Part of it is that he doesn't feel worthy of the task, but it's also because something is pulling him along, away from his homestead. He can't remember his dreams, but he thinks this _something_ is calling for him in them. 

When he sees the new names, he understands that this is what he's been waiting for. He'd known, deep down, that the barrels weren't meant to remain blank. When he made the pepperbox on the wake of his first dream of Orthax, he'd been certain that his bullets would unleash torrents of blood.

And it could have been worse, really. He doesn't know what has the others so worried. They would've gone for the dragons anyway; the names on the gun are just the confirmation that this is Percy's destiny. 

\---

"If I were you, I'd put it back. Or else it will be the last meal you ever eat, because I will find an abyss so deep and so far you will never taste a drop of blood again."

As he talks to Craven Edge, Percy feels himself go cool and sharp as if he were a blade himself. Darkness bleeds from the sword and a cry of rage echo in his ears, but rather than being scared and intimidated Percy is _angry_ , and he calls onto the mist of his own fury. He hears a gasp from one of his friends, but he doesn't have to look to know that smoke is rising from his back--he can feel the shadow peering over his shoulder, as if taking a curious peek at Percy's target. The two dark forms--the spirit inhabiting Craven Edge, and the phantom of Orthax, risen from the pit--hurl themselves at each other. They whirl and swirl together in a chaotic dance that is hard for the human eye to make sense of. Grog's arm shoots off and grabs Scanlan's throat. Percy stares at the cursed blade's shadow and in his mind he screams at it to back off. 

It works out, in the end. Afterward, the rest of Vox Machina is too preoccupied with Grog to pay him much attention. Only Vex sidles up to him a little later in the day, asking him if he's feeling all right.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Percy answers primly. "I'm not the one who died today."

"The shadow--"

"The shadow means nothing. It's a scar, no more than an echo."

"If you say so." Vex observes him with dark, inquisitive eyes. "It's just, the way you looked when you faced Craven Edge…"

She shakes her head, unease rippling across her face. Percy turns away from her to cut the conversation short. Even then, he can still feel Vex's eyes on him for a long while after that. 

\---

The shadow comes back during the fight against Umbrasyl, the deadly black dragon. For a desperate moment, as they're trapped in the dragon's lair, Percy pulls out the sword he rarely uses and hacks at the dragon, foregoing all caution. He's a ranged fighter, and in battles he likes to find himself a secure vantage point overlooking the battle field so he can dole out damage. But rage and frustration overtake him and he lunges himself at the beast, screaming like a madman. He slashes at it and his sword bites deeply into the dragon's flesh and scales; there's a powerful, primal satisfaction at being able to feel the blows reverberate in his arm. It's somewhat liberating. He gets blood on his clothes and even on his face, but he doesn't care.

It's only once he's stopped to catch his breath that he realizes that plumes of dark smoke are coming from the hem of his coat, his cuffs, from under his collar. He looks like he's caught on fire, and for a moment he feels a vague disquiet swirl in the center of his chest. When facing Craven Edge he deliberately summoned that dark force, but here he hasn't even noticed that it was happening. It feels like what happened in Whitestone all over again. The others don't seem to notice the incident, being too busy fighting the giant dragon. He decides not to raise the issue with them. 

He starts having dreams, or maybe it's more accurate to say that he starts remembering them. Most of the dreams are familiar ones: he sees Orthax's demonic shadowed silhouette and he hears it whisper. _You must use the gun. This is what it was made for. Do not used that accursed sword again. Only your bullets will fly true to the target._ He can feel that the shadow is angry with him, and it's disconcertingly frightening. 

The less familiar ones involve his sister Cassandra. He has felt a strange lack of remorse at her death; at least, it's not any worse than the remorse he was already feeling for abandoning her all those years ago. In his dreams, Cassandra doesn't look like the little girl he's better acquainted with. Instead, she looks like the young woman who chose the Briarwoods, with the white streaks in her hair, the lines at the corners of her mouth and the hard glint in her eyes. 

She doesn't hurl abuse at him, even though she would have every right to do so. She says, "Make it count, Percival."

\---

They come across Ripley during their quest for the Vestiges. When they see traces of her in Ank'Harel, something inside Percy comes loose. As the dragons' names began to fade from his gun, the continued presence of Anna Ripley's name has been like a thorn in his side. He sometimes takes the pepperbox out just to stare at her name, poking at the years-old wound until it festers. _Anna Ripley. Anna Ripley._ More than the things she did to him, or the clipped, precise questions she asked him in her clinical tone, it's the memory of how utterly helpless and insignificant she made him feel that still gets to him. _Never again. I will never allow myself to be reduced to nothing again._

 _You won't,_ the Orthax from his dreams promises him. _Together, we have the power to ensure that it can't happen._

They catch up with her on the glass-covered Isle of Glintshore, in the middle of the Ozmit Sea, after she's managed to steal Cabal's Ruin. The ensuing fight is brutal. Percy dies, but is wrenched back from limbo by the necklace that Pike gave him. 

"Your soul belongs to me," he tells Ripley, drinking in the sight of her frightened face, or what he can see of it through the veil of smoke. "I won't let you leave, this time."

After he's done, he looks around at the ravaged scene of their fight. Vox Machina, all of them bloody and battered, are staring at him.

"She deserved it," he says, then feels angry that they caused him to justify himself. They'd all have killed Ripley without a lick of guilt. What gives them the right to judge him so?

They keep staring at him afterward, their looks getting more insistent. He knows they whisper about him behind his back and tries to feel above it all. He cares nothing for what they think of him. He's never felt better, more imbued with purpose. 

When Raishan's name, the last of the Dragons', vanishes from the pepperbox, Percy's hands start shaking.

\---

Weeks goes by before a new name appears. Weeks of barely sleeping, barely eating, his whole body taut in the act of waiting. He _needs_ , without fully knowing what exactly it is that he needs. It's not as if Vox Machina doesn't manage to find plenty of enemies to shoot at. After Scanlan leaves, everyone is on edge and itching for a fight. But none of his targets can't give him quite the fulfillment that striking a name off his List does. When a name finally materializes, he doesn't care at first whose name it's going to be. And when he reads _'Scanlan Shorthalt'_ , he is, once again, completely unsurprised. 

\---

He tricks Keyleth into giving him her scrying stone, telling her he wants to scry for Tary. In fact, he takes the stone in his hands and thinks about Scanlan. Scanlan, who has left them, spitting to their faces in the process, who has stolen one of his guns. Percy focuses on his anger and the stone gives him the vision of a small village that Percy recognizes as one he'd passed after leaving Whitestone for the first time. He sees a campfire, farmers sitting in a circle around it, watching as Scanlan and Kaylie play for them. The light from the moon and from the fire allows Percy to read the enthralled expressions on the farmers' faces as they savor the simple pleasure of the music the gnomes offer them. 

Orthax is with him, watching the scene, but it doesn't alarm Percy because the demon never leaves him these days. Even when no smoke is visible to the others he is there, perched on his shoulder like a bird of ill omen. 

_He needs to pay,_ the demon says. _We thirst for his soul_.

Percy actually feels a kind of thirst as Orthax says those words. No, maybe thirst isn't the best way to describe it, for it isn't a need of the body. _Yearning_ might be closer to what it is, a yearning so deep it almost has a taste of its own, so intense that it surpasses the anger, making it feel insubstantial. All Percy knows is that he can't allow Scanlan to live. 

\---

He doesn't tell anyone in Vox Machina where he's going, or that he's leaving in the first place. It has become hard to think clearly through the buzz of Orthax's continuous whispering, but he knows at least that if he tells anyone what he's about to do, they would try to stop him. The consequences for stopping him would be dire.

He tracks down Scanlan to another village close to the one he's seen in his scrying vision. He sneaks at night into the inn where Scanlan has gotten a room. For some reason, maybe simply because they have the money to afford it, Kaylie and he took separate rooms. Some part of Percy thinks that it will make things easier. 

_Don't give him the time to speak or to sing_ , Orthax reminds Percy as he stands over Scanlan's sleeping form, feeling like an ice statue. His hands have stopped shaking. _You have to take care of him swiftly._

Scanlan wakes up just in time to see Percy hovering over him with the pepperbox in his hand. There's enough moonlight flowing into the room that Percy can see on Scanlan's face the shock that Percy can't feel anymore. Remotely, he thinks that he should worry more about how numb his feelings have become. But he knows that Orthax is right--Scanlan can't be given even a moment to speak. 

Scanlan's mouth opens. "Per-"

Percy shoots him between the eyes. The bullet goes through the skull, and the mattress, before it lodges itself in the floor. The gun shot resounds loudly in the building. For a moment, everything is eerily quiet, then Percy hears a few bangs from outside the room and voices shouting in alarm. One of them, Percy recognizes as Kaylie's. 

He has to flee, but he can't move. _Kill them all!_ Orthax roars in his mind. Percy looks away from Scalan's corpse and catches sight of his own reflection in the window: he's pale as death, with eyes like two dark holes born in his skull. Smoke is pouring out of his eye sockets. He has become the very figure that haunts his nightmares. 

A voice echoes in his mind, then, a faded fragment of memory. _It was the look on your face, Percy._

**Author's Note:**

> Percy in canon comes off as super pessimistic. He - and Taliesin - always thought that it would end badly for him and was surprised when it didn't. I'm very happy that he got his happy ending, of course, but it was also fun to explore the bad ending that he foresaw, so thank you for the prompt!


End file.
